Today on Meaghan's Minute, brought to you by Memory Protection Devices, lithium-air batteries hold the promise of drastically increasing power per battery weight, which could lead to electric cars with a much greater driving range.

However, there has been a number of challenges trying to bring that promise to reality, including the need to develop better, more durable materials for the batteries’ electrodes and improving the number of charging-discharging cycles the batteries can withstand.

MIT researchers have found that adding genetically modified viruses to the production of nanowires could help solve some of these problems, by increasing the surface area of the wire, thus increasing the area where electrochemical activity takes place during charging or discharging of the battery.